Rochelle Riley: Rosa Parks' legacy too big to be hidden in dark

August 31, 2014

Rosa Parks sits in the front of a city bus, Dec, 21, 1955. / Bettmann-UPI

Detroit Free Press columnist

A rare inside look at the life of Rosa Parks: Guernsey's Auction House in New York City is trying to sell the Rosa Parks archives. There are more than 8,000 items in the collection from the Civil Rights icon. / MIKE BROOKBANK / Detroit Free Press 9/1/2011

Thank God there are people who understand the meaning of the word “legacy.”

That understanding has been in short supply in recent years, particularly in the African-American communities and most notably in the case of civil rights icons whose memories demand remembrance.

Earlier this year, the nation watched the living children of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. squabble over some of his last effects, most notably his Nobel Peace Prize and his Bible, which President Barack Obama used to take the oath of office for his second term. The two items now sit in a legally protected safety deposit box, with a judge holding the key, until a hearing later this month to determine whether his sons can sell the items against his daughter’s will.

Storage also was the province of many items from the life of the late civil rights icon Rosa Parks, the beloved seamstress who died 50 years after her refusal to give up her seat for a white man helped spark the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. That single action and her subsequent arrest helped cripple America’s own Southern apartheid, ending segregated busing in city after city and helping to spur an end to other forms of inequality, including separate water fountains and restaurant entrances.

When Parks died, she left her estate to the institute she and her husband, Raymond, founded. But within months of her death, her nieces and nephews sued to get money. The years-long battle threatened to make the estate worthless, and the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute struggled along. Her history, the items that could serve as extraordinary reminders of what was, were stored.

But good news came last week in the Parks’ case when the Howard G. Buffett Foundation bought the mementos of her life and times, hundreds of them, for $4.5 million. They will leave the warehouses in Detroit and New York, where they had languished, to eventually be put on display.

“I’m only trying to do one thing: preserve what’s there for the public’s benefit,” said Buffett, son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett. “I thought about doing what Rosa Parks would want. I doubt that she would want to have her stuff sitting in a box with people fighting over them.”

How could either Parks or King have known? Parks made her wishes clear, and King was cut down at 39 when his children were too young to fight over his belongings.

But there is a lesson in these two cases for those interested in ensuring the lasting legacy of those who fought for the freedoms and opportunities that African Americans today couldn’t imagine living without.

Thanks to Mother Parks and Dr. King, I have seen a “whites only” sign over a door only in a textbook.

Thanks to Mother Parks and Dr. King, I have never had to sit in the back of a restaurant or stand outside a door to accept a paper bag because I could not go in.

Thanks to Mother Parks and Dr. King, I have never had to sit in the back of a bus.

There are lessons that came with bloodshed and tears that we must never lose. And many of those lessons can be found in the lives of the leaders who did what they had to do so we can do what we want to do.

So after this week, perhaps the children of other icons and those whose lives were literally transformed by these icons will work to do what Howard Buffett did this week — save a legacy.